


Colors Changing Hue

by Meduseld



Category: Common Law (TV)
Genre: Dorks in Love, M/M, Mentions of Paekman, Mild violation of privacy, Relatively slow burn-y, Travis is an artist, Wes is socially awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 05:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11247006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Travis is something of an artist. Wes can’t stop thinking about it.





	Colors Changing Hue

It’s not like Wes doesn’t know that Travis draws.

It’s not like anyone in the department doesn’t know: his desk is covered in cartoons and doodles and the reports he hands in tend to have little goblins and vampires and caricatures of his coworkers in the margins.

Wes has a photocopy of one, a half filled form about a petty burglary decorated with Paekman decked out like Link and flanked by a tiny Navi captioned _“a somehow more annoying Wes”_ buried deep in one his desk drawers.

There used to be more of them but they mysteriously disappeared after the funeral.

The point is they never go more than a month without someone dropping by Travis’ desk and admiring his work and not so subtly asking if he’ll draw them.

That someone is usually female and attractive, but not always. It’s actually the way the disastrous Jonelle hookup happened, now that Wes thinks about it. And he’d rather not.

Once, in the early days of their partnership, after Travis had gotten a patrol officer’s number with a promise of a “private drawing session” delivered with a sly smile, he’d balled up a piece of paper and chucked it at Wes’ head.

“Y'know it’s a real waste of potential, having a partner that’s never going to make a ‘draw me like one of your French girls’ joke”.

Wes had just ducked, picked up the ball, and hit Travis squarely between the eyes.

The truth is he’s not exactly sure when he noticed that Travis liked to draw.

During their first case probably, because they’d spent long hours on unofficial stakeouts and Travis likes to doodle when he’s waiting. but maybe not, because back then Phil Kronish was the one sitting across from him and Travis’ desk had been completely blank and devoid of personality.

Paekman elbowed Wes when he saw him staring, whispering “trust me, he’s totally cool”.

So maybe it had been through Paekman, who used to let Travis doodle all over his arms when they had lunch together, coming back to work with woodland creatures having lightsaber duels all the way up to his elbow.

Or maybe it was when Travis had shyly handed Wes a sketch of a suspect who’d managed to get away from them and Wes had blurted out that it was amazing before running to the bullpen to run recognition software.

Definitely by the time Wes brought him over for dinner with Alex for the first time. He’s pretty sure Alex still has the painting he made her in the house somewhere.

It had a cramped signature in the corner, nothing like the loopy flourishes Travis puts on paperwork, but just like the one on the painting of the Hollywood sign in Sutton’s office. There’s even one on the bleak moor landscape above Jonelle’s desk, which mysteriously appeared after a very creative threat involving a bone saw.

And then there’s the ones on the more intimate portraits he’s seen in a couple of Travis’ moms’ homes.

He doesn’t bring those up.

Even their therapy group knows, because Travis’ tree wasn’t just textbook perfect but technically perfect too. Dr. Ryan had asked about it, a slight note of foreboding in her tone.

“I’ve been drawing since I was a kid” he’d answered, hand reaching back to cup his neck and it had set off sirens in Wes’ head.

Travis preferred to smile at a gun in his face to showing any nerves.

Either the group didn’t notice or they tasted blood in the water because they all started in with the _'oooh, could you draw me’_ line and Travis’ shoulders locked up and his hand slipped to his back pocket, to touch his sketchbook.

Wes has never seen him let anybody look at it, no matter how much they might bother him about it and when Wes catches a rare glimpse of Travis with his head bowed and focused while working in it he looks away.

He’s never asked about it.

Dr. Ryan was wearing that _'A-ha, I sense an Issue’_ look so Wes did what any good partner would do.

He’d said Travis’ art was nothing special and that he could do the same, no sweat.

Travis jumped eagerly into the bickering, pointing out that Wes hadn’t drawn anything, and maybe he should put his money where his mouth was. Wes countered that he took classes in college, actually, and was only holding back so as not to humiliate him and oh look, the yoga girls are at the door, what a shame, see you all next week.

He didn’t lie, either.

He took a course in college, and passed. Mainly because the professor took pity on him, given that the most complicated thing Wes can draw is a stick figure.

The point is, Wes knows that he shouldn’t be flipping through Travis’ sketchbook and he can’t even pretend that it’s because he didn’t know.

All he can say is that he didn’t mean to.

They’ve been working for nearly 72 hours straight, surviving on quick cat naps in the breakroom while trying to build a solid case before their smuggler manages to fly somewhere warm with no extradition treaty.

He’d been driving back from the judge’s chambers, no luck on a warrant yet, when Travis called and said he’s got some old casefiles on his nightstand that might help.

There’d been no question as to how Wes was going to get in, even if he didn’t know how to pick every lock under the sun, they’ve always had keys to each other’s place.

Travis has a maroon hotel key card in his wallet somewhere usually, if not the hotel staff are used to replacing it for him. Wes prefers not to wonder what they think that’s about.

Travis’ place was as neat as ever, but it’s clear he’d left in a hurry. There was the debris of breakfast in the sink, and his bed hadn’t made. Dropped open onto the covers was his sketchbook.

It’s in Wes’ hands before he really thinks about it.

The open drawing is half finished, some sort of spaceship Wes doesn’t recognize.

He idly flips to the page before, even as he thinks that he really shouldn’t. Seeing it by accident is one thing, actually going through it is another.

But when he sees what’s on the page he can’t make himself stop.

It’s Wes himself.

Painstakingly rendered, his face is screwed up and red, apocalyptically angry. It’s not captioned.

The next one he finds has him deep in thought, eyes unfocused and his fingers on his chin.

The one after that, he’s laughing openly, pointed teeth and all.

They’re mixed in with all the others, superheroes and motorcycles and Hudson and foster siblings. He sees himself drawn as a cartoon or devil-horned or captioned with things he half remembers saying or things he knows he’s never said.

And then he has to stop. Because halfway through he reaches one that makes his fingers reach up to tangle in his St. Christopher medallion.

The drawing is rough, but finished, like Travis meant to get back to it later.

He definitely put a lot of work into it, from the creases he can feel in the softened paper, where an eraser traced over it again and again.

On the page, Wes’ eyes are closed. His head is tilted back, surrounded by a halo. It feels intimate, personal.

He takes the files and leaves.

~

Wes doesn’t mention it when he gets back.

Or the day after. Or the day after that, when the paperwork goes through and another arrest gets added to their number and they get three days of mandatory leave.

That night, he dreams his way back to school as a boy, warm light through stained glass windows and martyrs with big eyes on the walls. He’s looking for something.

When he wakes up, stretching under low quality hotel sheets, he lets himself think about the drawings again, pulling them forward from where they’ve been humming at the back of his mind.

It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself.

There’d been others in the book, like that one sketch of Money with a frustrated question mark drawn on his arm because Travis’ couldn’t get his tattoos right. One of his mothers, Gloria, puttering around in the kitchen. A half-finished Alex and a Dr. Ryan too, pulling a silly face that Wes can’t quite picture her doing.

It doesn’t mean anything at all.

~

Wes makes it all of a month before letting it slip, a month of questions circling each other in his head.

They’re having coffee at Travis’ place, dawn still slipping into the sky.

They’d been at a crime scene less than an hour ago. The silence is comfortable, both of them gearing up for the day ahead.

Wes is facing the window, and in the reflection Travis is working in his sketchbook.

He says it without thinking: “do you want me to move to a better light?” in the glass, Travis freezes.

Then he breathes out, “Last month?“

Wes winces.

"Look, it was an accident, okay, and-” then he stops, shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, but that-that’s not. I’m sorry”. He was wrong, and he knows it and Travis deserves the apology.

Dr. Ryan would give him a gold star; it seems she’s making progress with them after all.

Travis is quiet for a long time.

Then he says “stay there, okay?” Wes focuses on the window. The version of his partner in the glass turns back to the sketchbook.

He waits fifteen minutes after finishing off his mug of coffee before Travis moves, trying to think of something to say.

When he opens his mouth he gets cut off “We’re cool, man. I like drawing you, anyway”. Wes nods, relief washing over him like a wave.  

~

They don’t talk about it.

It doesn’t become a Thing They Don’t Talk About, which is a list that keeps getting shorter now that Doctor Ryan is hacking at it.

It’s just something that doesn’t come up.

Travis does get less subtle about drawing Wes, or maybe it’s just that Wes has suddenly become aware.

Little cartoons of Wes and Sutton and Kendall and even Jonelle join the mess on Travis’ desk. His reports have stumbling mummies and ghosts floating in the margins.

And every once in a while, when Wes is lying in bed waiting for sleep to come or stuck in traffic somewhere, he’ll think about it, the question lingering in the back of his mind.

Travis probably didn’t mean anything by it.

He probably likes drawing Wes because they’re always together, so he’s familiar. Comfortable.

Or maybe Wes is just ugly. He’d heard once that artists liked odd, unusual faces better.

The memory of his sharp teeth rendered in pencil makes him blush a little. They’d called him Dracula in middle school, when they’d been even more noticeably oversized before his face grew into them and he’s not sure how he feels about Travis noting them too.

He can remember almost every name they’ve called each other in every fight they’ve ever had but that particular crack isn’t among them.

And anyway it’s not as if Wes will ever actually ask.

It’s probably better if he just forgets about it.

~

He doesn’t.

~

It’s halfway on his mind the night they tumble into his hotel room, almost drunk from the celebratory rounds of drinks they had at the bar downstairs, laughing at the look on the jackass extortionist’s face when they’d closed the cell door on him.

The staff had quietly ushered them out, and they’d broken into giggles in the elevator.

It’s Travis who opens the door, and while he’s fumbling with the key, Wes gets a truly, _spectacularly_ , horrible idea.

Once they get their footing, Wes neatly removes his jacket, then drops onto the bed, arms tucked behind his head.

“Hey Travis? Draw me like one of your French girls.” he grins up at his partner, who’s grabbing onto a chair for balance and blinking at him.

He’s never seen that particular look of blank and somehow panicked confusion on his face before.

Wes throws his head back and actually howls with laughter.

He feels the bed dip and Travis is sitting beside him, almost smiling. “So you’re gonna get naked?”

Wes snorts.

“That is so typical. Give you an inch and you take a mile”.

Travis freezes, and Wes notices his hand is halfway to somewhere, hovering in the air between them.

Then he pulls on that practiced I-am-perfectly-well-adjusted-there-is-nothing-to-see-here grin “Yup, that’s me” and his arm moves back.

Wes stretches out, muscles relaxed from the alcohol and his partner’s easy presence, and puts Travis’ hand on his cheek. He’s almost sure that’s what Travis was aiming for.

Travis swallows, it’s loud in the silence, and Wes closes his eyes and just breathes.

Travis has good hands, strong and elegant and he can smell both gun oil and charcoal.

Like everything else about their partnership, it falls into place without fireworks just _oh, you’ve been here the whole time. It’s been this all along._

He doesn’t need to ask to know the answer anymore and in the space between heartbeats Travis’ body molds onto his like water, like breathing, like coming home.

~

Wes wakes up earlier than he’d like.

His temples are throbbing with not-quite-hangover and there’s too much light in his face because they hadn’t closed the blinds.

His cheek tingles with day old beard burn.

He shifts a little and feels Travis freeze behind him.

He realizes that it’s the scratch of pen on paper that woke him and him when lifts his head up, Travis is holding the pad of crappy hotel paper that was on the nightstand.

He looks like he’s gotten caught doing something terrible, burying a body maybe, but there’s something else in his eyes.

Defiance maybe, like he took the only chance he’d get and he refuses be faulted for it.

His shoulders hike up when Wes rasps “what the hell is wrong with you?

It’s a Saturday. Those are for sleeping”

Travis laughs, shocked and happy and Wes doesn’t have the energy so he just squeezes his bare knee, still half amazed he gets to.

“Aww, c'mon Wes. I’ll get you breakfast”. His smile is so bright Wes debates rolling back toward the window. “Let me sleep and I’ll get you room service”.

“Deal”.

~

(They order pancakes. Travis opens the door. The waiter doesn’t look even remotely surprised.)


End file.
